Here is Tatiana on Sept 29, 2007 looking alive and well. Due to incompetence at the Zoo and the malicious idiocy of a few young men, she and one of those young men are now deceased. A needless tragedy that ought never have happened.

One should build wild animal enclosures with as much protection for the animals from the public as the public from the animals. We all know bridges and buildings in San Francisco must be built, or retrofitted, to withstand an earthquake the magnitude of which we may never see. So I assumed (incorrectly, as we all did) that a wild animal enclosure would be built with worst case scenarios in mind as well.

I have read comments by citizens calling for the zoo's permanent closure but that is just a knee-jerk response. Zoos provide valuable sevices to the public, including breeding programs of our most endangered species, education and research. If built and maintained properly an excellent zoo can be as much a part of the cultural fabric of our city as are its library, symphony, parks and museums.

Every major disaster gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. The shipping industry learned a hard lesson from the sinking of the Titanic. After the Loma Prieta earthquake our building codes changed. Let's only hope we learn and apply valuable and obvious lessons from this, our current zoo catastrophe.

They are known for "walking on water", because their very long toes allow them to walk on floating vegetation. Unfortunately, the ones we saw were in the mud the whole time and so we never witnessed this behavior.